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Introduction

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Founded as a simple frontier trading post in 1841, Dallas, Texas, is now the nucleus of a thriving metropolitan area. A far cry from the dusty cattle town often portrayed in popular film and folklore, Dallas is one of the 10 largest cities in the United States.

Situated on a rolling prairie in north-central Texas, Dallas is located about 70 miles (110 kilometers) south of the Oklahoma border and about 30 miles (50 kilometers) east of Fort Worth. The downtown area is near the point where the three forks of the Trinity River merge. The altitude of the city ranges from 450 to 750 feet (140 to 230 meters) above sea level. This part of Texas normally has mild winters and hot summers. The average temperature is 66° F (19° C).

Cityscape

Jeremy Woodhouse/Getty Images

With an area of 385 square miles (997 square kilometers), the city of Dallas covers much of Dallas County and extends into parts of Denton, Collin, Rockwall, and Kaufman counties. The city of Dallas forms the core of a large metropolitan area that encompasses several other municipalities, including Garland, Irving, Mesquite, Richardson, and Grand Prairie. This urban area is in turn part of the sprawling Dallas–Fort Worth metropolitan area, which is known locally as the Metroplex.

One of the most striking aspects of the city is its architecture. Examples include the colorful neon- and argon-decorated buildings of the much-photographed skyline; the Morton H. Myerson Symphony Center and the Dallas City Hall, both designed by I.M. Pei; and the Dallas Theater Center’s Kalita Humphreys Theater, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Fair Park has been home to the country’s largest collection of Art Deco buildings since the Texas Centennial celebration was held there in 1936.

Dallas has several arts and entertainment zones. In the downtown area are the West End Historical District and its marketplace. In northeast downtown is the Dallas Arts District. Within this 17-block area dedicated to the visual and performing arts are theaters, museums, a concert hall, a sculpture garden, and an arts high school. Trendy live-music clubs are clustered just east of downtown in Deep Elum, a renovated warehouse district and artist’s haven that was a blues mecca during World War I. Greenville and McKinney avenues are miles-long boulevards dotted with restaurants and nightclubs. To the southeast is Fair Park, packed with museums, sports facilities, and the grounds for the huge annual state fair. Fans of the old television series Dallas visit Southfork Ranch, the home of the fictional Ewing family, in nearby Parker.

One of the city’s most notorious sites is Dealey Plaza, the place where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963. A memorial was dedicated there in 1970. The former Texas School Book Depository building, from which the assassin is believed to have fired his rifle, was acquired by Dallas County in 1977. In 1989 a museum was opened on the floor of the building from which the fatal shots came.

People and Culture

Dallas has a lower population density than most other major cities. Its population is somewhat younger than the national average and is more ethnically diverse. As of the 2000 census, about half of the population was white and a quarter was African American. About a third of the city’s residents were Hispanic.

A chief center of higher education in Texas, the Dallas area has many colleges and universities, including Southern Methodist University, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, Baylor College of Dentistry, the University of Dallas at Irving, the University of Texas at Dallas, and Dallas Baptist University. Paul Quinn College became the city’s only predominantly African American college when it relocated to Dallas in 1990.

Dallas has a vibrant arts scene, with regular performances of musical theater, dance, opera, and many types of music. The city has museums devoted to art, science, natural history, African American art and history, Asian art, and women’s history, as well as a planetarium, an aquarium, and a zoo.

Sports fans are attracted to home games of the Dallas Cowboys, winners of three Super Bowl championships in the 1990s. Other professional sports teams in the Dallas area include the Texas Rangers in baseball, the Dallas Mavericks in basketball, FC Dallas in soccer (association football), and the Dallas Stars in ice hockey. Since 1937 the stadium in Fair Park has been the site of college football’s annual Cotton Bowl game, held on New Year’s Day.

Economy

Dallas owes much of its past growth to cotton, insurance, and oil. Today, the leading component in the city’s highly diversified economy is services—especially trade, finance, banking, health care, computer services, and telecommunications. Several thousand corporations in these and other fields are headquartered in the city. Wholesale and retail trade have been important to Dallas since the 1870s, when it developed as the trade center for the southwestern United States. The city is now a major global trade market. The Dallas Market Center is the largest wholesaling venue in the world. Among the city’s leading retailers is Neiman Marcus, which was founded there in 1907. Dallas is also a major center for conventions and airline services.

Industry is likewise varied. Many companies in Dallas produce high-technology products such as semiconductors, wireless communications equipment, and computer hardware and software. Among the city’s other industries are publishing, printing, food processing, and some clothing manufacture. In the years after World War II, Dallas was a leading manufacturing center for aircraft and missile parts. That kind of heavy industry was partly eroded by the end of the Cold War and cutbacks in the space program. The once-reigning Dallas oil industry declined sharply in the late 20th century, though the city is still home to hundreds of petroleum and petroleum-based corporations.

Dallas is a major transportation hub in the South. It is connected to several interstate and national highways and is served by a system of commuter- and light-rail lines. Dallas–Fort Worth International Airport is one of the country’s busiest airports. The city also runs Love Field, a general-purpose airport about seven miles (11 kilometers) from downtown that serves several million travelers annually.

History

Dallas was founded in 1841 by a Tennessee lawyer named John Neely Bryan. He mapped out a town site and trading post at a natural crossing point on the east bank of the Trinity River. The source of the city’s name is still not certain. Many historians believe that Bryan named it for George Mifflin Dallas, vice president of the United States under James K. Polk.

Dallas was incorporated as a town in 1856 and as a city in 1871. A fire destroyed most of the business district in 1860. The city was rebuilt in time to serve as a supply center during the American Civil War. After the Civil War, the city prospered during the years of the great Texas cattle ranges.

During the early 20th century, Dallas was one of the largest cotton markets in the world. The discovery of oil in east Texas in 1930 launched a new industry and helped put Dallas on the road to greater prosperity. The massive military buildup of World War II and the Cold War greatly aided the growth of the local defense industry. The petroleum sector was hard hit by changes in oil prices in the 1980s. In the 1990s, the area’s booming high-technology industries attracted many new residents, and Dallas–Fort Worth became one of the country’s fastest growing metropolitan areas. Population (2010) 1,197,816; metropolitan area (2010) 6,371,773.

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